A Comprehensive Review of Death House in "Vecna: Eve of Ruin" (Full Spoilers)

A functional, tense dungeon-crawl brought down by missed opportunities and poor noncombat gameplay.

Image credit to Wizards of the Coast

Vecna: Eve of Ruin is an ambitious adventure, spanning eleven chapters from levels 10 to 20. It’s been marketed as a grand tour through 5th Edition’s greatest hits, featuring familiar settings like Avernus and Krynn, plus unvisited ones like Oerth and Neverwinter—and culminating in a climactic finale with one of D&D’s greatest villains.

Today, though, I’m just going to be reviewing the fifth chapter in Eve of Ruin: Death House. (Why? I’m not particularly interested in the overall adventure, and, as a Curse of Strahd aficionado, I was curious to see what Wizards of the Coast did with their return to Barovia.) That means this review will have full spoilers for Chapter Five—which I’ll be reviewing on its own merits as a standalone adventure—and few spoilers for the rest of the campaign.

Adventure Summary

Let’s start with a brief synopsis of the adventure. You can divide Eve of Ruin’s Death House into a prologue and four “subchapters.”

Prologue. The players, who have been hunting for the fragments of the Rod of Seven Parts, have just found the third fragment. Upon holding the third fragment, they instinctually know that the fourth piece is in Death House, which dwells in the realm of Barovia. Upon returning to the plane of Sigil, their home base, they can research Barovia to learn that (1) it’s encircled by the Mists, which trap anyone who enters, and (2) it’s ruled by Strahd, who has final say over who leaves.

Chapter One: Village of Barovia. The players pass through a portal into the outskirts of the village of Barovia. (For Curse of Strahd fans, the adventure is set approximately four hundred years prior to Curse of Strahd; at the time the players arrive, Strahd is a relatively young vampire and the Durst family is still leading a cult in the village.)

As they make their way into the village, the players are confronted by an angry mob, which has been stirred up against outsiders by an evil Ravenloft faction called the Priests of Osybus. The players can either disperse the mob or convince them to depart peacefully.

The players then meet Sarusanda, a member of a neutral Ravenloft faction called the Ulmist Inquisition, who will either like or dislike them depending on how peacefully they handled the mob. Sarusanda tells the players that Death House is infested with a cult, that the fourth Rod fragment lies within, and that the Priests of Osybus have infiltrated the house to try and obtain the fragment for themselves. She also shares that she’s planning to infiltrate the house herself to stop the Priests (and Strahd) from obtaining the fragment, though the players are welcome to take it if they get it before her enemies.

Chapter Two: Exploring Death House. The players meet the Durst children, Rose and Thorn, on the street outside Death House. (For Curse of Strahd fans, these children are the real deal, not illusions.) Rose and Thorn complain of a monster in the house and strange noises in the basement, but know little else.

Upon entering the Main Hall of the house, the players and Sarusanda are attacked by a random combat encounter. The Mists then surround the house, preventing anyone from leaving, and Sarudsanda splits off from the party to explore the house on her own.

The players can explore the house as they choose, which features two additional random encounters (which all now either involve Priests of Osybus, vampire spawn, cult-related undead, animated objects/constructs, Sarusanda, or a combination of these) in two pre-selected dead-end rooms, some loot in a secret room, and two additional random encounters in pre-selected rooms as they ascend into the attic and descend into the basement via a pair of secret doors and staircases.

Chapter Three: Death House Dungeon. The players explore the dungeon beneath Death House in search of the Rod fragment. The dungeon, which is generally in the shape of a loop with two dead-ends and an outlet descending to the next floor, features one random encounter in the loop, a random encounter in one of the dead ends, and an additional random encounter as the players descend. There’s also a poisoned pit trap near the stairs leading down.

Upon descending to the lowest level, the players fight two shambling mounds, then enter the cult’s ritual chamber. There, the cultists have just sacrificed an innocent victim by piercing her with the Rod fragment, which has summoned a CR 15 boss monster. If the players beat the boss, they can take the fragment freely, though the cultists warn them that Strahd will punish them for their transgressions. (The cultists don’t fight unless attacked.)

Immediately after taking the fragment, the players have a spooky auditory “vision” of someone (clearly Strahd) entering Death House through the front door.

Chapter Four: Escape From Death House. As the players try to leave Death House, they find that several passages and doorways have been replaced by dark portals. Touching or entering a dark portal leads the players into a “Haunted Zone.” There are four Haunted Zones, each of which requires the players to solve a minor timed puzzle to escape:

• Castle Dining Hall. An illusion of Strahd toasts the players. If they drink from their own chalices within 1 minute, they escape; if they don’t, they take damage and escape anyway.

• Endless Graveyard. The players enter an endless cemetery, which includes headstones bearing their own names. If they unearth and lie down in their own coffins before finishing a long rest, they escape; if they don’t, they gain a level of exhaustion and escape anyway.

• Ghostly Recital. The players find Strahd playing the harpsichord for several specters. If they disrupt his performance, Strahd vanishes and the specters attack. If they artfully finish playing Strahd’s song within 1 minute, they escape; if they don’t, they take damage and escape anyway.

• The Crying Room. The players find illusions of Rose and Thorn crying and flooding a doll-filled room with their tears. If they find the Strahd-shaped doll and pull off its head within 10 minutes, it becomes a drain and sucks all the water out and they escape; if they don’t, they gain a level of exhaustion and escape anyway.

Each time the players exit a Haunted Zone, the DM rolls on a table to see which random Death House room they emerge into. At some point during this process, the players reunite with Sarusanda and can help her fight some Priests of Osybus. If they do, she reveals that her father is a member of the Priests, that she once spared him, that she now regrets doing so, and that she’s hoping to find him in Death House. She then joins the players as a companion for the rest of Death House.

Once the players have passed through all four Haunted Zones, the dark portals disappear. If the players try to leave Death House before defeating Strahd, the Mists teleport them back to a random room of the house.

Upon reaching the Main Hall again, the players find Strahd waiting for them with two vampire spawn. If Sarusanda feels friendly toward them, she lies to Strahd and says that the players are fellow Ulmist Inquisitors; the players must then make a DC 20 Deception check to convince Strahd that Sarusanda is telling the truth.

On a failure, or if Sarusanda feels indifferent toward them, Strahd lets Sarusanda leave and then attacks the players. In either case, upon killing Strahd or obtaining his permission to leave, the Mists retreat, allowing the players to return to Sigil via the portal they came from.

Adventure Analysis

Let’s go through each “subchapter” in turn:

Prologue. This section exists pretty much just to deliver exposition and can be finished in five minutes or less.

Chapter One: The Village of Barovia. This section doesn’t have much going on, but it’s a decently flavorful social encounter that basically serves as an avenue to meet Sarusanda and start the players’ relationship with her, which eventually determines whether they have to fight Strahd or not.

Chapter Two: Exploring Death House. This section is pretty much the original Death House from Curse of Strahd, but with the low-level combat encounters removed and replaced with a number of Tier II random combat encounters scattered through a few of the house’s rooms. Depending on what the DM rolls or chooses, it might give the players additional opportunities to interact with Sarusanda as well.

Of the four random encounters in this section, one is placed in a dead-end room (the Conservatory), one is guarding a low-level secret loot room (the Library/Secret Room), one is guarding one of the entrances to the attic staircase (the Nursemaid’s Suite), and one is guarding the dollhouse that shows the players where the basement stairs are (in the Children’s Room).

Overall, this section has the same issues as RAW Death House—there’s not much for the players to chew on other than infrequent combat, and it’s a linear dungeoncrawl with a lot of dead ends and fights that aim to waste the players’ time and whittle down their hit points. The secret doors aren’t foreshadowed or hinted at all; the players just need to decide to make an Investigation check and then roll high enough to beat the (fairly easy) DC.

The most notable change in this version is that the players can now enter the basement through the trapdoor in the Den of Wolves, which skips over the entire house and a solid half of the dungeon, leading the players almost directly to the cultists’ altar. Clever players will remember Rose and Thorn’s comments about the “strange noises from the basement” and search for hidden entrances when the first floor fails to turn up any visible ones, so this is a nice reward for smart thinking (though a nightmare for pacing).

Chapter Three: Death House Dungeon. Like the house’s upper floors, this section removes all of the original Death House’s low-level encounters. This is a serviceable, bog-standard dungeon crawl with a simple boss fight at the end, though it seems odd that the players never actually confront the cultists themselves.

Chapter Four: Escape From Death House. This section is where the adventure tries to experiment—and largely fails. The Haunted Zones make for a fun idea in theory, but generally fall flat in their execution:

• They have no Watsonian justification other than “Strahd likes making the players do spooky things.”

• They generally require the players to metagame in order to “guess what the DM wants them to do.”

• They neither meaningfully test the players’ skills nor give them interesting choices to make.

• Their “fail-forward” implementation is among the worst examples of the principle, with the module dutifully shuttling players forward whether they succeed or fail.

One of the Zones—the Ghostly Recital—even assumes that the players will interrupt Strahd’s performance, but provides no escape mechanism if Strahd is allowed to finish his song successfully. (I assume that this was an editor’s oversight, but it’s nonetheless sloppy.)

The ending, which allows the players to depart freely if they befriend Sarusanda and succeed on a Deception check, is cute, but fails to foreshadow Strahd’s respect for the Inquisition at all. This is made magnitudes worse by the fact that the players are offered this solution for free merely by treating Sarusanda nicely; rather than allowing the players to feel like they’ve pulled one over the DM, they’re instead left feeling like the DM has played the game for them.

Strahd’s statblock is generally similar to his RAW statblock, but with a few tweaks (e.g., fireball has been replaced by innate spellcasting, he no longer knows animate objects, his unarmed strike has been renamed, he can transform as a bonus action, etc.). His hit points, however, have been decreased by 8 compared to Curse of Strahd, which is unexplained and generally strange (especially for this tier of play.)

His fight is fine in theory, but his regeneration and resistances are worthless at this level of play, leaving him with something closer to Defensive Challenge Rating 12 (or below). Players who focus their fire on him before his vampire spawn while find that he crumples like wet tissue paper in less than a single round, with the spawn swiftly following.

Overall:

• The prologue is an infodump and Excuse Hook that exists to move the players to The Plot.

• Chapter One is a functional introduction to Barovia and Sarusanda.

• Chapter Two is a few scattered random encounters and a search for multiple hidden doors in a fairly linear dungeon.

• Chapter Three is a cromulent dungeon crawl with a cromulent boss fight, but which does basically nothing interesting with the cultists or the Priests of Osybus.

• Chapter Four is a series of hit point taxes via short, poorly designed puzzles, followed by an easy Strahd encounter that wins itself.

Adventure Review

I like to grade adventures on six metrics:

• Tension. Does the adventure had strong, clear dramatic questions?

• Agency. Does the adventure provide fun, engaging gameplay that provides the players with meaningful choices and challenges?

• Catharsis. Does the adventure feel rewarding to engage with and complete?

• Structure. Is the adventure well-paced, with clear rising action and a climax?

• Pitch. Does the adventure have an engaging and well-developed concept?

• Presentation. Is the adventure well-organized and easy to run?

Let’s see how this one does.

Tension: B+. Assuming the overall campaign discourages the players from dawdling (i.e., spamming long rests) and gives them a clear reason to care about the Rod fragment, this adventure has a perfectly serviceable dramatic question: “When the players learn that the fourth fragment is in Death House, can they defeat the Death House cult, bypass the Priests of Osybus, and survive Strahd von Zarovich in order to claim the fragment—before the Mists trap them forever?” It’s got decent obstacles (the Priests, cultists, and Strahd), a clear goal and stakes (find the Rod fragment to stop Vecna), and an interesting pair of complications (Strahd’s Haunted Zones and the Mists’ obstruction).

However, the dramatic question is also pretty straightforward, with no meaningful external stakes (i.e., meaningful and resonant stakes tied to the personal stories of NPCs) to speak of. It’s pretty much just a simple fetch quest, with no internal/personal stakes beyond (to my knowledge) “the multiverse is where I keep all my stuff, and I’d be sad if Vecna destroyed it.” There’s not a lot of meat on these bones, but, at the end of the day, a lot of tables just need something edible, and this adventure provides that in spades.

Agency: C-. The adventure provides few opportunities for meaningful choices or challenges. The bulk of Chapter Two is just “the players wander down arbitrary dead ends and occasionally get ambushed until they find the Correct Dead End.” The nonlinear paths in the dungeon—and especially the secret trapdoor entrance—are quite nice, but generally don’t matter except insofar as they provide the players with random opportunities to avoid (non-foreshadowed) random encounters.

The battlemap design is generally poor, with pretty much all combats taking place in small, thirty-by-twenty (or smaller) rooms, stifling Tier III players who deserve a chance to let their skillsets breathe. As in the original Death House, most of the secret doors are gated by arbitrary Investigation checks.

The Haunted Zones are disappointing, requiring arbitrary solutions on short timers with zero foreshadowing or introduction. (In fact, the adventure expressly encourages the DM to highlight the specific objects the players must interact with to escape each Haunted Zone via soliciting free Investigation checks—the hallmark of sloppy game design.)

The Good Ending (in which the players escape with Sarusanda) is disappointing, giving the players an unearned victory and depriving them of an opportunity for fun gameplay. The Bad Ending (in which the players fight Strahd) is a poorly designed combat encounter, with a main boss who folds like a paper cutout after a single paladin’s turn.

Catharsis: C. Most players will feel triumphant after defeating Strahd, but this is greatly diminished by the lack of a personal relationship to him as a villain. Many players might feel more annoyed than relieved at escaping Death House, especially because it lacks any “ticking clock” mechanism that pushes them forward once Strahd arrives, and because the Haunted Zones are less “scary” than “frustrating HP tax.” Even if players feel relieved after deceiving Strahd in the Good Ending, it’s ultimately a false relief because Strahd bears them little threat at all.

Structure: C. This is a linear adventure (which is fine if executed well) with some branching and modular elements in the house and dungeon stages, respectively. Everything other than that is linear (which is still fine).

The tension mounts nicely as the players approach the ritual chamber—but falls flat as soon as they encounter the Haunted Zones, especially once they realize that “failure” just means “success but with some damage.” The Good Ending dissipates almost all tension completely, since it has no build-up or foreshadowing and no meaningful gameplay.

The choice to rely near-entirely on random encounters, rather than pre-placed encounters, is disappointing, especially because the house’s small size (as in the original Death House) would allow pre-set encounters to tell a real story about the interplays between the cultists, the Priests, Strahd’s vampiric minions, and Sarusanda. The random encounters involving Sarusanda are also confusing, given that she somehow keeps disappearing in a linear dungeon and winding up further down the track without giving the players a real opportunity to follow her.

Pitch: C-. On paper, the concept is intriguing—we’re racing the Priests of Osybus and Strahd to obtain a magical relic held by a cult that’s way out of its depth. We’re joined by an Ulmist Inquisitor with personal ties to (and unfinished business with) the Priests, and have a chance to slowly develop a relationship with her. Strahd’s arrival causes nightmares to manifest, forcing the players to escape through multiple haunted demiplanes in order to escape.

In practice, however, the adventure falls woefully short. The Priests are treated as random encounter fodder, and Sarusanda never obtains any sense of progression or closure relating to her father. The Durst cultists are never dealt with or developed, and are generally treated as a piece of the scenery (despite this being . . . their house). The Haunted Zones are spooky riddle cutscenes that frequently feel more silly than scary.

Ultimately, it’s also impossible to shake the feeling that this entire adventure—a dozen small fights with Tier II enemies in a small, spooky house owned by a low-level cult—is just beneath a Tier III party, especially when the Mists shut down any efforts to utilize those Tier III portfolios.

Presentation: A-. Aside from that one small hiccup with the Ghostly Recital Haunted Zone, the adventure has no game-breaking bugs and seems easy to run straight from the book. However, some scenes do still need to be cross-referenced with general information sections earlier in the chapter, so DMs will need to read the chapter at least twice to really get a solid handle on everything.

Overall: C+. Death House in Vecna: Eve of Ruin is a solid, functional, out-of-the-box dungeon crawl with strong tension, but is ultimately brought down by missed narrative opportunities, poor noncombat gameplay, and an over-reliance on random encounters.

If you’re looking for a beer-and-pretzels hack-and-slash with minimal storytelling, this adventure is perfect for you. If you’re looking for a more emotional or narrative adventure with deeper gameplay, or if you’re looking for an adventure that does anything remotely interesting with Strahd and the setting of Barovia, seek elsewhere.

“We turned the corner, and there was a vampire.

I groaned and rolled my eyes.”

—Tracy Hickman, Curse of Strahd Foreword

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